When We Were Overwhelmed by Sins, You Forgave

When we were overwhelmed by sins, you forgave our transgressions (Psalm 65:3 NIV).

This verse gives us a glimpse of the enormous burden of sin. A man who has never been overwhelmed by his consciousness of sin has never understood forgiveness in a real sense.

A real understanding of what sin is creates in you a sense of being overwhelmed. It has nothing to do with the number of sins one has committed.

But many people count the number of sins they do and if they are few think that they are better Christians than their neighbor. This reflects a lack of knowledge of the nature of sin.

Sin cuts open fresh wounds in the heart of God. And God suffers from those wounds because He forgives His children. See, if God immediately killed off His children whenever they sinned, He need not have had to suffer.

But knowing that His children are behaving in ways that are against Himself (He is holy), His laws and His love creates pain in the heart of God. To keep His children and to bring them back, He forgives. But that forgiveness is costly to God.

When you realize the sorrow in the heart of God over sin in you; you experience the overwhelming. You see the repulsiveness of sin to God. You then are able to see the grieving heart of God.

You experience true forgiveness when you say to God that you too have begun to understand what it costs God to forgive you. Only when you see the cost of the blood that flowed on the cross will you feel overwhelmed by your sin.

Until you realize that you have not known what forgiveness is. You have not understood what God’s love is. Your religious experience is simply shallow.

Remember that God is full of mercy in His dealing with you. The moments when you come to know the utter repulsiveness of sin in your life and feel overwhelmed by it (see Psalm 40:12), God takes the initiative to forgive you.

You do not earn it. But it is a God-given gift. It is then that you learn to love God much; for He has forgiven you much!

The Bible calls a man forgiven thus as blessed (see Psalm 32:1, 2); and because of God’s unlimited forgiveness He is feared (see Psalm 130:3, 4). May the forgiveness of God become real to you today even as you are overwhelmed by your sins!

More Manna:

I Will Make a Distinction

When We Were Overwhelmed by Sins, You Forgave

Glorious Things Are Said of You, O City of God

Sponsored Links for Christmas